Monday, 24 May 2010

The pictures Kier don’t want the local press to have

I was surprised to read in this week's local paper that Kier, the developers who are keen to build on the land beside Walthamstow station have refused to supply the local paper, the Waltham Forest Guardian, with pictures of the proposed development:

Their bashfulness is strange, is it not? After all, these pictures were on public display for about thirty-five seconds – I was unaware of the proposed development or the display, as was our local MP Stella Creasy.

The developers claim that one of the benefits of their scheme is to provide a pedestrian route between Walthamstow Central and Queens Road stations. In fact this pathway was a condition of an earlier development by Queens Road station, which the Housing Association involved then reneged on. Ten years after the path was supposed to open it hasn’t.

Luckily a local blog was on hand to take pics of the plans, which you can see here, with additional comment from another local blogger here.

Incidentally, if anyone was remotely serious about a massive expansion of cycling in Waltham Forest, some of this land would be set aside for greatly expanded cycle parking provision at Walthamstow station. But of course that features in nobody’s plans, which is yet another reason why cycling’s modal share in Waltham Forest will continue to flatline at one per cent for the foreseeable future. Cycling isn’t going forward in Waltham Forest – small rises on selected A roads are elsewhere matched by stagnation or regression.